BOOK CLUB BAGS

NEW and Upcoming Book Club Bags

November 2008

 Chinese Lessons: Five classmates and the story of the new China.  John Pomfret. 

Pomfret's first sojourn in China came as an American exchange student at Nanjing University in 1981, near the outset of China's limited reopening to the West and its halting, chaotic and momentous conversion from Maoist totalitarianism to police state capitalism and status as world economic giant. Over the next two decades, he returned twice as a professional journalist and was an eyewitness to the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Pomfret's enthusiasm and personal access make this an engaging examination of three tumultuous decades, rooted in the stories of classmates whose remarkable grit and harrowing experiences neatly epitomize the sexual and cultural transformations, and the economic ups and downs, of China since the 1960s.

Night Birds.  Thomas Maltman.

In 1862, led by Chief Little Crow and incited by the government's failure to provide their annuity, the Dakota Sioux staged an uprising in Minnesota, slaughtering hundreds of settlers. As a result, 38 Dakota men were hanged, the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Maltman's promising first novel bounces between the years leading up to this atrocity-laden conflict and 1876, when the James-Younger gang would stir up its own brand of bloody mayhem in Minnesota.

Oh my Stars.  Lorna Landvik.

As this folksy novel opens, the sadness in Violet's life is as thick as the cream on top of the milk bucket. Faced with abandonment, cruelty and a life-altering accident, Violet has an empty heart but also finds herself open to change, which enters in the form of a parade of characters.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals.  J. Maarten Troost.

J. Marten Troost’s true-to-life comic tale details one man’s (and his girlfriend’s) search for paradise in the South Seas. Vance provides a stiff-upper-lip tone perfectly suited to Troost’s narrative and unleashes a range of accents and voices that bring to life a South Sea island packed with lunatic locals. (Don’t even ask about Half-Dead Fred.)

What was Lost.  Catherine O’Flynn.

Stirring and beautifully crafted, this debut novel recounts how the repercussions of a girl's disappearance can last for decades. In 1984, Kate Meaney is a 10-year-old loner who solves imaginary mysteries and guesses the dark secrets of the shoppers she observes at the Green Oaks mall. Kate's unlikely circle includes her always-present stuffed monkey; 22-year-old Adrian, who works at the candy shop next door; and Kate's classmate, Teresa Stanton, who hides her intelligence behind disruptive behavior. Kate's grandmother has plans for Kate: send her to boarding school. But Kate doesn't want to go. Fast forward to 2003, where it's revealed through Lisa, Adrian's sister, that Kate disappeared nearly 20 years ago, and Adrian, blamed in her disappearance, also vanished.